Dark Roasted M.Christian

Here we go again: another article for the always-great Dark Roasted Blend. This time it's about underground cities. Enjoy!


The whys shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. After all, when Mr. and Mrs. Neanderthal tut-tutted about the sorry state of the neighborhood, what with all those Homo Sapiens moving in and all, they did it around a nice warm fire – in a cave.

What is surprising is that even though early man lived in caves for a very, very long times we’ve pretty much abandoned having granite floors and ceilings, homes hewn – or simply found – inside stern mountains.

Pretty much, though, isn’t everyone – and even though most of now live above ground a few very back-to-basics people have returned to living below ground: out of necessity in many cases, and, a rare few, because they simply liked it.

One town that bridges below ground and above ground is the charming Spanish city of Setenil De Las Bodegas. While a lot of the elegant town is above ground, many of it is also tucked in a wandering network of caves under its sheltering cliffs. Because Setenil De Las Bodegas has been a living city for centuries it also lacks the dust and decay that sometimes haunts a lot of ancient underground settlements.


If you want to talk about an almost mystical kingdom that lived as much under the ground as on it then you have to talk about the Cappadocians. So in tune were these ancient Turks (who were there long before there was a Turkey, actually) with the earth when they carved entire towns and cities into like natural outcroppings they did it so elegantly as to look as flowing and natural as … well, nature. Sure, time has ruined a lot of their work but still today you can see hints of their craftsmanship and geological architectural skill in what of their cities and tunnels still survive.

What’s also fascinating about underground cities is how they can hide, right under out feet, for centuries. Another Turkish underground city was discovered in 1972 when a local farmer noticed his water supply was going somewhere it shouldn’t – that somewhere turning out to be a massive underground city, called Özkonak, that – at it’s height – could have been home to (wait for it) over 60,000 people. Yes, you may whistle.

There’s not enough space here to go into every ancient underground city – mainly because, like with Özkonak, some of them have no doubt yet to be found – especially if we decide to be generous and stretch the definition of what a city might be. After all, sometimes underground chambers and tunnels never planned to be cities have become makeshift ones, like with the catacombs of Paris and the Resistance during the Second World War.


It gets even fuzzier if you include man-made underground structures and not just cities carved by hand into stone. If you use that definition the world is honeycombed by modern underground cities, especially in congested cities like Tokyo, Singapore, London, and New York.

Putting aside the questions of what is or isn’t a real underground city there’s one that has to be mentioned. Yes, it’s ancient, but it was also a living subterranean community up until very recently.

What’s also odd about it was that it was carved not from stone but from salt. Started sometime in the 13th century (again, you can whistle), the Wieliczka Salt Mine in Poland has been in almost continuous operation until 2007. Stretching over 300 kilometers long, it goes as deep as 327 meters. Okay, that’s impressive, but what’s really staggering is that the mine was home to generations of workers and their families, who transformed their simple mine into a cathedral of brilliant and awe-inspiring art.


Purely a labor of love, the miners carved the salt into statues, a chandelier, and even into a chapel. But that’s not all: the mine also features a movie theater, an underground lake, a café … all the amenities of life on the surface but rather deep in the living earth.

As with narrow houses we talked about before, as the population rises and living space shrinks, its looking more and more likely that many people will be living as their great, great, great ancestors did: below the ground – though at least this time when we complain about the neighbors it’ll be by the light of something much more sophisticated than a roaring fire.

Pornotopia: Losing It

The following is just one of a bunch of pieces I’ve been working on for a project tentatively titled Pornotopia: The Ins and Outs and Ins and Outs of Sex and Erotica. Enjoy!


Part of my writing life used to be answering teenagers' questions about sex. I liked answering those questions; one, because I loved feeling the righteous fury of educating kids on sex - when so many have this mad-ape delusion that if you don't teach them, they won't do it; two, because it fascinated me to hear what kids were up to, and what their level of ignorance/knowledge was; and three, it was a way of making sure that at least a few of them wouldn’t have to go through the hideous morass of outright lies and twisted, embarrassing myths that flying around the schoolroom, playhouse, or network news show.

Very little came up in those years that flat-out punched my buttons. Sure there were a few abuse cases (“talk to your teacher, a policeman, an adult you trust.”), a few coming out heartbreakers (“you are not alone”), and a few just plain obnoxious ones - like the 'kid' who sent me 500+ messages in a single day (I got him kicked off his ISP) - but nothing that's really made me froth at the mouth. Until, that is, I got my 501st virginity question.

“My boyfriend licked me, am I a virgin?”, “My boyfriend fucked me in the ass, am I a virgin?”, “A girl touched my special area, am I a virgin?”, “My girlfriend blew me, am I a virgin?”, “I had cybersex with a mouth-breathing, VD infected, Mormon traffic cop - am I a virgin?”

The one thing I couldn’t say during my stint in that in that polite venue I can finally say now: WHO THE FUCK CARES!?

Sex, in this day and age, can kill you. Forget HIV, Hepatitis that can kill you faster, and nastier. Even if you're not gonna die, you can still spend the rest of your days in pain from something like genital warts, or herpes - and don't forget those old favorites, crabs, gonorrhea, syphilis, and many, many more. Of all things kids should be worrying about VIRGINITY AIN'T ONE OF THEM!

I have one thing to say to anyone out there who wants to give me a hard time for giving these 'sweet, innocent kids' a hard time: FUCK YOU!! What do YOU think should be more important to kids: virginity or DYING?! And before you start slinging that bullshit about abstinence, get this through your thick skull: In all the years I answered those questions only a bare dozen were “I’m thinking about” or “what if I?” Every other one was after the fact: there's this poor kid sitting there on his/her bed after they’ve and the first thing you’ve taught them to think is “Am I still a virgin?”

But I shouldn't be so pissed at them: they're just kids after all, just young sprouts trying to grow in the poor light and weak soil you’ve give them. Nah, I don't really blame them for their ignorance and misguided priorities.

I BLAME YOU!

I tried to do my part to get those kids to realize that sex is wonderful, special, damned lots of fun, and - if you’re not careful - potentially fatal. The least you could have done was back me up on this: talk to your kids about condoms and safe(r) sex, try to teach them that even if they aren't planning on having sex they should still know how to do it safety. Teach kids about love, trust, respect - and what you can catch by dirty toilet seats (crabs) and what you can't by kissing (HIV). Teach them that virginity is dogshit compared to life, and how to live to a ripe, and randy, old age.

They're YOUR kids, after all - I just answered their questions. YOU raise them.

The Romance Studio Likes Licks & Promises

As some of you folks might know, I have a brand new collection of my 'straight' erotica coming out very soon from the fantastic folks at Phaze Books, as both a print as well as an ebook, called Licks & Promises.

I'm happy to say that, thanks to my pal Lisabet Sarai, I just got an early review from The Romance Studio:

Licks and Promises takes the reader across the country and back in a series of erotic vignettes about love in its many aspects. In House of the Rising Sun, Amina finds both a reason to live and a new kind of lover. Dust observes a couple’s lovemaking in the midst of crisis against the background of a desert pool, and In Control questions who is really in charge in a sub/dom interaction.

These three are just a sampling of the nineteen stories in this collection. This was my first M. Christian book and I will definitely read more. The depth of sensuality in each story, the attention to each sense, sight, sound, taste, takes the reader right into the room with the characters. His imagery is simply breathtaking.

Although the stories are brief, they are very complete, each is worth liking on its own. Jasmine the sexually active disembodied hippie in The Tinkling of Tiny Silver Bells, Randolph and Juliet, the devoted roleplaying couple in Dead letter, the fat man in The Naked Supper, each a fully developed person with a different, and usually intriguing, way of achieving satisfaction.

I recommend this book to anyone who likes a sexy story with substance. Particularly if you don’t mind a little laughing and crying while reading a great book.

Getting A Grip

I'm flattered and very pleased to be a guest blogger for the very fun, and wonderfully thought-provoking, Get A Grip site run by Lisabet Sarai, Kim Dare, Jude Mason, Jamie Hill, Helen E. H. Madden, and C. Sanchez-Garcia.

My own humble contribution to their theme of "love & lust" is a piece about ... well, love and lust. Here's a teaser. For the rest click here.

Okay, “love and lust” ... well, let’s take the last one first.

I’m lucky, I guess, that I don’t have a lot of sexual baggage. My parents had more than their fair share of faults … okay, a LOT more than their fair share of faults … but at least they spared me from the sexual guilt and religious shame a lot of other folks seem to have been saddled with.

Because of that lack of sexual Samsonite, I’ve always been very much in touch with my erotic identity: in short I know what I like and that’s okay with me. In many ways, especially considering the tiny corner of literature I’ve found myself working in, I’m a very simple sexual critter. Sure, I might write about queer bondage, lesbian domination, and all kinds of outrageous and outré fetishes and kinks for the straight folks, but when I turn off my versificator (look it up, it’s from Orwell’s 1984), switch off the lights, and head home, it’s to simple and sweet sexual fun.

Not that I’m dull, you understand. It’s just that compared to my writing life, my nighttime antics might disappoint the two people who read my erotic stories. No whips, no chains, no safe words, no leather, no latex, no appliances, no lingerie (at least not for me), no feathers, no personas, no spikes, no pudding … no kidding.

Sure, I have a few interesting quirks. Part of the reason I think I sympathize so much with queer life is that while I’m comfortably heterosexual, the object of my desire is not exactly common.

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Pornotopia: How Much?

The following is just one of a bunch of pieces I’ve been working on for a project tentatively titled Pornotopia: The Ins and Outs and Ins and Outs of Sex and Erotica. Enjoy!

The Editor sends the story back, No one comes like this. It’s obvious she’s faking it and I realize he’s right: she was faking it.

#

The Director leans in, hot lights burning my legs: Just can’t get the lighting right, your cock still looks too small. I frown, thinking of all the wankers from San Francisco to Boston feeling good that the stud in their whack-off vid is smaller than they are for once.

#

She never calls me back. Six months later, I run into her on the street. I read that story you wrote for Warped Perverts, she says, scanning for a quick escape route. It scared me.

#

The Photographer tells me to smile, damn it, smile as I lift my leg into yet another impossible position. I miss the gallery opening because of a cramp so bad I can’t get out of bed.

#

Losing my virginity gets published in a book called Cherry Bombed about horrible, embarrassing, first times. I am supposed to get paid $15 and two copies. The check bounces and the book never appears.

#

I can’t sleep for three nights running, the plot of Truck Stop Transsexuals bogged down in a morass of motivation, character development, and a flawed narrative. I almost miss the deadline, and waste five bucks on Fed Ex changes getting it to the editor in time. When the magazine comes out, I see that he completely butchered the ending, losing the wonderful sense of pathos I had so carefully worked into it. Then I lose four more nights of sleep, shocked wide awake that I actually cared.

#

Where do you get your ideas? she asks in a breathy voice tinged with a boiling horniness as she strokes my cock. I can barely get hard, most of my brain being diverted by my thoughts of she stroked him like a fireman cleaning his pole: diligently, professionally -- as if trying to work a gleam out of it ....

#

My spell-checker has grown unwieldy from the words I have stuffed in its tight, resistant, pulsing, memory: cocksucker, cunt, mons, asshole, pubes, motherfucker, testicles, dildo, lube, S/M, she-male, latex, faery, jerk-off, cunnilingus, felatio, flagellation, flogger, Saran Wrap, cunt-licker, assfucker, and on and on and on, etc., etc. I run it through a letter to my landlord and broken mail slot becomes she-male slut. Now he looks at me funny and the damned thing never gets fixed.

#

The party is full-swing and banging away: in the sling, guy fists guy - foaming Crisco plopping to the floor. In one corner two dykes are taking turns kicking each other in the butt. Over there a latex dom is turning her slave’s ass into maximus tar-tar. Next to me a grinning piercer expertly punctures some guy’s dick, then feeds steel rings through the holes -- and all I can think is poor plot development, crappy characterization, no motivation ....

#

She’s a fan. I’ve read everything you’ve ever written, she says. Jerked off to all of them. Talked other playmates into even reenacting some. Raves about me all the time. Box Lunch, Sailors At Sea, Yeeha!, The Bang Gang, TV Repairman ... her favorites each and every one. I take my pants off and she’s disappointed. We fuck and she’s disappointed. We each come and she’s disappointed. I tell her, don’t get any rewrites in life, sweetie.

#

The book, magazine, movie comes out. I burst with enthusiasm: I did this, I did this! I become annoying, showing it everyone. Then someone also bursts, and shows it to my mother ....

#

Am asked to write about the most degrading, insulting, humiliating, sex act you can imagine and the first thing that comes to mind and out of my mouth is How much?

Masquerade, A Teaser

Here's a preview of a very special project: Masquerade was illustrated by my great pal, and a fantastic artist, Wynn Ryder, from a story by ... well, me ... for an upcoming graphic novel anthology called Legendary.

I'll be putting up pages from the final over the next few months ... or you can read the entire thing on Wynn's Deviantart pages.

Dirty Words, An Excerpt

Here's a teasing taste of my newly-reprinted collection, Dirty Words, currently available from the always-great Lethe Books.

Btw, "How Coyote Stole The Sun" was originally in Michael Thomas Ford's anthology, Happily Ever After, and then in Susie Bright's Best American Erotica 1997.

How Coyote Stole The Sun

The bus dropped to its knees, yawning open its door. The day was burning: the sun angry at something it wasn’t sharing and the wind was scared to come out.

Dust swirled, friendly and clinging, around Dog as he left the cooling bosom of the Interstate Lines bus. Satisfied that it’s friend was out and walking safely away, No 47--Albuquerque to Taos--closed its door and left with a belching cloud of exhaust.

The trees must have had issues with dog, because as he approached them they shuffled and fluttered their leaves to flash pieces of the too-hot sun down on him.

But Dog was used to that kind of treatment from trees--he paid them no mind and just kept on walking along the dusty road.

After a time of walking, (precisely how long being difficult to say because time wasn’t something Dog really understood and because watches, as a group, refused to speak true to him even if he bothered to ask) Dog saw some signs of man: the broken teeth of a old picket fence, the rusting mesh of its chain-link brother, the stumps of telephone poles, and, distantly, the regularity of a small house.

A few steps later, details filled his eyes: it was a small house. Clapboard painted red. A porch that was a mixture of rotting and rotted old boards. Glassless windows with torn curtains like pale moss. A screen door with more holes than screen.

It took Dog a few seconds to really see them, they were so faded into the grasses and the shadows: The two little boys were brown and furtive from running with the rabbits and the squirrels. Their eyes were as blue as the sky when it was in a good mood, and about as tame as wild foxes. They were naked and tanned from the stern sun--dirty and scuffed and uncaring, unworried. Maybe nine Summers, maybe ten. Not twelve. They could have been brothers or just kin who had been playing outside together too long.

Dog watching them, doing nothing for a while, then he dropped down onto his haunches, feeling his old blue jeans creak and stretch against his thighs. Putting two fingers on the ground, he gave the boys the gift of thinking that he needed them for balance--when Dog could have stayed there for many nights without moving.

After a time, the two wild boys decided that he wasn’t a hunter, or at least wasn’t a hungry one. Cautiously, the came out from the high grasses in front of dead house and looked at him.

Finally, the one with some echoes of being civilized, or just less of the music of the wild world, spoke: “What you doing here, Mister?”

Dog spoke, slowly and without threatening timbre: “Just passing.”

The boy who spoke, nodded, as if that was more than enough, or all he could understand.

Dog played a bit with the dust at his feet, careful to draw something without meaning. “Anything around here?” the drifter said.

The other boy, the one who didn’t speak, heard a sound and leaped into the weeds in pursuit. The other looked like he wanted to join his friend or brother but was still fascinated by the stranger. “Birds. Rabbits. Mice. Squirrels. Roc.”

“Roc?”

He jerked his head down the road. “He has more than anyone. Even stuff.”

“Stuff?” Dog said, standing and brushing some of the clinging dust from his denim jacket.

The boy looked confused for a moment, as if he didn’t have any other words. Another sound chirped from the high, brown grasses and he looked harder this time in its direction: the wild wasn’t calling--rather, it was screaming for his small attention.

He looked back at Dog once more, decided that either he didn’t have anything else to say, or the means to say what he wanted to, and bounded off into the grasses to make hunting and catching noises all his own.

Dog watched the grasses shake and shush a bit, then turned and walked down the road.

Roc?

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Pornotopia: I Masturbate

The following is just one of a bunch of pieces I’ve been working on for a project tentatively titled Pornotopia: The Ins and Outs and Ins and Outs of Sex and Erotica. Enjoy!

Sure, I masturbate. Yeah, I jerk off. Damned straight, I yank it, pull it, stroke it, rub it, and jerk it. Lube, soap, shampoo or split. Left hand, right hand, frotage (look it up), other’s hands, sheets, and gizmos (manual, electric, and even diesel). Like it, love it -- do it a lot.

Let’s get this straight -- we all do it. Sure, yeah, right: “not me” someone says. Sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. We all do it. Nuns do it, dogs do it, cats do it, bees do it, Newt Gingrich and Jessie Helms do it (god, what a thought!). You say you don’t do it, you mean it when you say you don’t do it. Well, who leaves the wet spot on the bed, a topless Tinkerbell?

I masturbate. Come on, let’s say it together, enunciate those syllables: “I” -- rounding chorus of self identification. Come on, belt that fucker out -- “I” -- mean it now, say it true -- “Mast-ur-bate.”

I masturbate. He masturbates. She masturbates. They masturbate. We all masturbate. That out of the way? Breathing maybe a bit easier now? Let me tell you this, the old cliché of imagining folks in their underwear has zilch over thinking of all of you sitting there rubbing stroking, jacking, jilling yourselves into a grazed euphoria of self-love. Makes saying that I do it real easy.

I masturbate. Bullshit on that “self-abuse” nonsense: think of them sitting on the toilet in some sleazy dive yanking their pull little wieners with two embarrassed fingers, groaning like taking a shit, popping off an eye-dropped full of fun cream, wheezing like an asthmatic marathon runner (oooooh, sexy!) then going out onto the pulpit to tell you that “it’s bad for you”, “it’s sinful”, “it’s detrimental.”

I do it. I’m proud that I do -- because I do it well (hell, I like it) and I do it often: horny, need to sleep, need to relax, wanna get off quick, wanna get off slow, got a cold, don’t got a cold, at home, at parties (the right kind of parties), driving, sleeping (“Yeah, Tinkerbell, yeah!”), for myself, for others -- available for weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, etc.

Been doing it for years (first time think something like twelve -- late bloomer), will do it for many more. Do it tonight, do it probably tomorrow, do it with my wife, do it with my playmates, do it for pay (if anyone’s interested), do it for free. Ask me to, go on, ask me.

You can see me do it, you can hear me do it (the movie’s out there somewhere -- sorry they never told me what the title was going to be) and I write about doing it ...

... stroking my long, proud self, feeling the soft skin and the ridges and bumps of the veins. Feeling the skin of my hand rise and squeeze around the thick head. The pressure, the wonderful feeling of the strong muscle that cranks me up and away. The strength in my balls, the pulse at the head as my hand cups then pulls back from it. The tiny pulls and tiny sharp plucks of my forest of pubic hairs getting caught in my hand. My asshole getting nice and tight. My grip getting tighter as my cock gets harder. When it’s good it’s very good and my cock is a iron putter wrapped in fine silk. My cock is a diving rod pulling my brain this way and that with images and sensations: entering, sucking, licking, biting, beating, feeling, touching, and more, much more.

I love to start the trip to see where it might detour. Start out with a fuck-film in your head, maybe the feeling of that one night, that one day (satin, silk, polyester, latex, leather, cotton, elastic waistbands -- ) and let my cock take me that way that this way through side-trips of past fucks: just that sensation, that picture, that image, that fantasy, that lover, that glimpse, that night (or day). I might start with the Standard Number Four (A) fantasy: big black tits in my face while she jumps on my rigid cock and might end up at in a mobile home somewhere below the Mason-Dixon with a scummy pre-teen (all zits and no tits and gum and smelling of piss and booze) on my face an some guy named Joe-Bob bathing my cock and balls in spit that’s mostly cheap beer.

It’s ain’t so much the destination as it is the trip.

I jerk off when I’m horny. I stroke it when I’m excited. I pull it when I’m turned-on. I also yank it when I’m bored, can’t sleep, have a cold, have a headache, or can’t think of anything else to do (or there’s nothing good on TV). I do it in bed, on the john, in my living room, at my computer (I give good email), in the backyard (that was a fun party), and everywhere in between. I’ve done it driving, in planes, in porno houses, on trains, and when I shouldn’t have been doing it and I’m damned lucky no one caught me.

Don’t act so fucking surprised, either, a lot of you have done a lot worse -- or a lot better.

Stigma? Masturbation should be prayer. It should be the way we show our love for the God/dess in ourselves (how better than to show him/her/it a really good time?). We should have it fucking institutionalized. No more of this bullshit white-haired old men yelling at us from inside their million dollar temples about a hateful god who doesn’t want you to yank it or jill it. Nah, we should tune in every goddamned morning to the right kind of prayer -- ”Put your hands where they belong, Brothers and Sisters, and give unto you the pleasure that is the God/dess’s gift to you -- your genitals. Rub them with me, dear people, and feel the rising power of prayer in you (and remember to clean up afterwards).”

Jerking off should be a fucking sporting event! “Live from the Superbowl the longest ejaculation, most powerful orgasm, most orgasms (women and men’s divisions), most female ejaculate, and quickest (longest takes way too much time for television).” Personally, I favor the San Francisco Queens (got ten bucks riding on them, too).

It should be taught in school, it should be continuing ed, it should be an extracurricular activity (“For today, class, we are going to examine the social, personal, physical repercussions of long fingernails -- ”). It should be part of the glee club (high notes), cheer leading, and shop (bookend, sailboat, coat rack, dildo, butt-plug ...). We should be told and shown how to do it well, safely and effectively.

Maybe it will. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But for certain it is safe, harmless, natural, comfortable common, and -- best above all else -- hellava lot of fun!

I know you masturbate. I know you do, because I do. A lot. So get off it, get on it and --

-- love thyself. Damnit!

Languages

Japanese, Dutch, Norwegian, German, Spanish, Italian, French ... it's pretty damned cool to suddenly realize how many languages I've been translated into.

Painted Doll, An Excerpt

Here's a tantalizing taste of my new novel, Painted Doll, currently available from the always-great Lethe Books.

Chapter 2

... Qui Dan Road to the High Street, a stumble of crisp British in a city of fish sauce and MSG. The change didn’t alter her steps, modify her movements.

Beautiful? Oh, yes: without doubt, without a question. The splendor of a rose, the loveliness of an orchid. The kimono is flawless, as is the china white of her immaculately applied artificial complexion. As she walks, hearts stop then race. As she walks, heads twist, eyes widen. As she walks, breaths are hissed in, sighed out.

Beautiful? Oh, yes: without doubt, without a question. But she is a knife-edged rose, a razor sharp orchid. Her stride is mechanically perfect, as is her perfectly vertical posture. Their hearts might race, their heads may twist, their eyes certainly widen, their breaths absolutely hiss in and hiss out, but as she steps nearer they instead step back. As she walks, they avert their eyes. As she walks, they pull themselves in.

The woman walking down the High Street feels them watching her, their glances furtive tickles, their quick stares barely felt hooks out of the corners of her always forward facing eyes. Passing a bookseller – tight fans of rough tan paper with lurid Cantonese chops on their glistening plastic covers hung in sagging arcs of cord – a reflection was revealed to her, a caught sight of what they were seeing.

But not what they were thinking. But she knew, nevertheless: each of them lost in illusions and fantasies as carefully crafted as her rouge, as flawlessly presented as the mae migoro and ushiro migoro of her kimono, as immaculately assembled as her performance:

She’s a dragon, some might think: the cruelty of a reptile, the flawlessness of a myth. You may approach her, with bravery beyond that of any battlefield, speaking with a stammer and a twitch, and if you were fortunate beyond your worth she’d slow, pause, turn with prudently measured grace, deeming your presence not completely disgusting. With that look, at that glance, would be a flickering forked tongue of cruel invitation, a scintillating promise of peaked breasts topped with fist-tight nipples, a belly steel plate flat and firm, a behind curving out in twin clenches of muscular intensity, thighs sculpted by rigid posture, and between them a scented valley of ruby silk.

But first, a miniscule task. But first, an all but insignificant request: to firmly stand guard for her honor and dignity; to fetch a inestimable gem, an incalculable jewel, or just a unexceptional sticky-sweet pastry; to perform for her a melody of praise, or a stammering litany of desperate worth; or a quick athletic demonstration of physical merit; or become for her an avenging knight, a battle to defend her honor against some heinous offense.

A minuscule task. An insignificant request. Accepted without doubt or hesitation, the reward a slow curl at the corner of her cold stone face, a bow of gratitude, and a bright flash of serpentine green eyes. Totally entranced by her, completely captured by her, the dragon would then reveal the metaphorical points of venomous teeth, sinking the illusion of her love deep into the shaft of your encouraged penis by showing you the true face of her cruelty.

The prize was yours but the tasks were actually anything but miniscule, not at all insignificant: firmly stand guard for her honor and dignity – for a year; fetch a inestimable gem, an incalculable jewel, or just a unexceptional sticky-sweet pastry – from a thousand miles away; perform for her a melody of praise, or a stammering litany of desperate worth – perfectly, without the tiniest flaw; a quick athletic demonstration of physical merit – unattainable by even the greatest athlete; or become for her an avenging knight, a battle to defend her honor against some heinous offense – in combat against a killing machine.

And so the dragon passes by, a smile on her cold-blooded face. No one approaches her, no one is willing to come near. And so they live, by letting her just walk by.

She’s a doll, some might think: a porcelain figure, an ivory representation. Beneath the silks and satins would be a body as perfect as only a master artisan could create. Breasts both delicate and womanly, nipples as delicate as rosebuds, a belly with an ideal swell, hands with the grace of ten Noh performers, calves a perfect taper, thighs an entrancing form, back a clean surface of alabaster, neck a musical curve, feet delicate and precious, a behind highlighted with sacral dimples, and a female cleft that was a pale oyster and a tiny pink pearl.

Like a doll, she would belong to whoever buys her. Cash, credit, merchandise – the right amount and the woman would instead walk behind, following her owner towards palace or hovel, both with the same unmoving mask of her face.

Palace or hovel, she would walk in the door, standing still and quiet with an item’s posture. Maybe she’d look better in the living room window, where the afternoon would bathe her in golden light? Or perhaps she’d be better exhibited in the bedroom, where her kimono could be removed like one from a real woman.

Yes, the bedroom. That was where she would be best displayed. Moving past, it was clear in their eyes, the allure of her perfect submission. A thing. An object. A piece of feminine sculpture. Unable to disagree, unable to refuse, bendable in all kinds of imaginative ways. From behind, cock sliding between her cool ivory cheeks. Face to face, marble breasts for unimpeded kiss, licks, and sucks. On top, her tight thighs spread apart and welcoming upward thrusts. Anything you wanted, anytime you wanted.

Desire was a rippling wave behind her, a heat distortion in the warm city air. It was obvious in their eyes that there, in her, was a world without ‘no,’ a land without complaint, a woman without a soul.

Then they stopped, that wave of erections and licked dry lips chilled with a slap of frigid revelation. Stepping back with the rest of the crowd, these men retreated from the precise rhythm of her steps, with whimpering fear in their wide eyes, their shaking heads.

Ivory arms, marble legs, alabaster body: inflexible, unfeeling, stiff, unbending, unyielding, and -- worst of all -- cold. With her you’d never hear ‘no,’ never be refused, never be denied, but you’d also never hear the beat of her heart, the music of her voice, the chimes of her laughter, the moans and screams of her pleasure. You’d perform with her your deepest, darkest, most subterranean – and all she would do would be to look at you with inscrutably glass eyes.

She’s a tiger, some might think: a beast with the stripes of a traditional Japanese dress. Hidden beneath her Asian camouflage was a woman’s body, exercised into an extension of her erotic drive. Where other women had euphemisms and poetic alliterations, she had simple, direct, and powerful words to describe herself. Where other women had bosoms, she had tits of ideal jiggle and sway, covered in thrilling smooth skin. Where other women had nipples, she had a pair of dark brown direct connections to her clit. Where other women had posteriors, she had two plush muscular globes that clenched and released with the beating heat of her clit. Where other women had sexes, she had a demanding, insistent cunt.

To see and handle these differences would be more fortune than seduction. You did not take the tiger to dinner and slip hot words between dessert and coffee. You did not lay flowers at the feet of this hot blooded woman within the cool disguise of a geisha. You did not whisper poetry into the shell-like ear of this elegantly robed bitch.

There was no way to make her do anything, no way to slyly allure or simply trick her into a private room, no way to seduce her. The only thing anyone could do was to stand within the range of that sweeping predatory glance and hope that her eyes would positively estimate your worth as a device for her pleasure. Then, and only then, would her red-painted lips open ever-so, more than a whisper but less than full voice, and speak the one word you’d prayed to hear: “Come.”

Behind her, pulled along by her insatiable need, you would follow. It wouldn’t be a long journey, for her cunt has a very short attention span. Cheap hotel on the next street, expensive one even closer by, or just the nearest fetid and slimy alley – whatever was within range.

Patience was for ladies. Hesitation was for women. Tigers – even ones hidden within silks and satins – had no need for foreplay, patience, or hesitation. They wanted, so they took.

And if you were lucky, she would take you. Hands down to your cock, a squeezing judgment for size and firmness. Lips to yours, a tongue penetrating your mouth, am attacking kiss wanting nothing of you but to be kindling to her roaring heat.

On her knees, she would take you. But only because that was what she wanted. Your come was not expected or important. A flesh device to penetrate an orifice, you would be used until she was bored and ready to move onto other penetrations of other orifices.

Or perhaps she’d require something else. Falling back, satin fabric pulled roughly aside, she might bare an insistent slickness, the gleaming lips and fast-beating clit, and demand your service. Failure to accept or in performance too terrible to contemplate.

At the end, your cock would be needed: hard, strong, and fast -- nothing else important to her. Burning hot, insanely wet, you’d enter and execute the task she’d ordered, working until her screams tore at your ears and her nails scratched along your back.

Then that would be it. Humiliating? Being reduced to only a device for someone’s pleasure usually is. But the blistering heat of her, the ferocious need of her cunt would put – and keep – a smile on your sweaty face.

But – and again men standing step back, retreat in shivering dread when she walks back – one does not ever tame a tiger, even after it is fed. Who knows what she might hunger for after? Meat, blood, flesh, dignity, any number of horrible violations – any of them within her grasp, and you too exhausted to resist.

Tigers are wild things, after all: enjoyable to watch in zoos, penned behind restraining bars, but far too bloodthirsty in bed.

She’s a machine, some might think: isn’t it wonderful what they’re doing with shape memory alloys, mnemetic plastics, optical fibers, and conductive polymers? Absolutely wonderful things coming out of Japan, India, the Wilding, and the young turks of the École Polytechnique, these days. Look up and there are dragonfliers pausing for location fixes before darting off at near-invisible speeds, packages clutched under their iridescent fuselages. Look down and there are myriad scurrying mechanisms trailing polished tracks of perfumed cleanliness through the city’s persistent grime. Look around and there are cinematics lazily scrolling across a lady’s fluttering fan, posters for the newest Malasian blockbuster cycling through tantalizing glimpses of furious martial arts and stiffly chaste duets, the hushed commuting fuel-cell and ethanol traffic, and the softly creaking carbon fibers of a prosthetic hand on a crumble-faced veteran of the Chinese genocide as he lays down a mah-jongg tile.

Look at her and you might see a device as carefully machined as a German car, a Swiss watch, a Japanese entertainment center, Indian software, or an African running shoe: breasts as ideal and resilient as silicone, skin of perfectly cured plastic, muscles as precise and strong as actuators, a genital-pleasuring interface between her thighs, a mouth with the same technology.

It was a safe bet that without her protective kimono covering, the pseudo-body of hers was as superlative as a supermodel, as sensuous as a Playmate of whatever month, as adept as an amalgamation of every courtesan who’d ever lived, as refined and machined as her manufacturers could make her.

Movement like the architecture in fine software, presence as authoritative as graceful as a jet fighter, skin as smooth as the polish on a fresh-from-the-factory-floor Ferrari, she passed by – and with her passing the tracking of lust and greed in the eyes of the male crowd, and sour envy on the faces of everyone else.

Here was the best of both of a man’s world: the twin allures of a clever device together with a well-articulated woman – or, to be more specific, as those men revealed so obviously, ‘coupled’ together, a mating between flesh and sex and advanced technology and power. Purchasing this – or simply leasing with an option to do the same – and putting it in the garage or the bedroom, would mean not just a product but also a woman of every dream, not just a sex partner but also a sophisticated piece of fine engineering.

But that wasn’t all. Look at them watching her move by. Lust was there, both for machine as well as woman, but there was also the dawning realization that there could be even more there: things that squeezed, buzzed, vibrated, hummed, heated, cooled, swirled, oscillated, tingled, and more, more, more so much more.

But then they pulled away, out of her way, out of her traffic, their fantasies dropping behind to be passed by the rushing acceleration of a nightmare, the barreling truck of a terrifying understanding.

Engineering, went their minds as they retreated, is fine and good, stimulating and thrilling. Sex, they thought as they ran away from her, is fantastic and wonderful. But to fuck a machine, to be intimate with gears and cogs, synthetics and electricity, hydraulics and radiators, could be good, but also could be like thrusting into a meshing, tearing, burning, shocking, scalding, blistering industrial accident.

Brushes, An Excerpt

Here's a teasing taste from my novel, Brushes, currently available as a print and ebook from the great folks at Phaze.

Chapter 1: Constance

There’d been good times. No, that was what she used to think: a habit she hadn’t yet completely broken. She thought they’d had good times. Since then, her vision had improved, and now she could look backwards with much greater clarity.

Even though her father would have reached out his latex-gloved influence and gotten them a nice place, he out of pride and she … well, it could have been spite, to be the pretty daughter of the rich, refined doctor living in a tiny, dirty, apartment, but she told herself it was more to show that she could make it on her own in the real world. It was noisy, near the highway where the trucks drove – day and night – to Barcelona. It was dirty, no matter how many bottles, sponges, brooms and mops she used. It was hot, even when the sky was overcast and rain streaked the darkly clouded windows.

As she’d done before they met, before they’d married, she worked in her father’s practice during the day, leading stooped and wrinkled citizens with chubby bellies -- and fat wallets -- from waiting to examination. All as before, except now her father seemed older, slower, his eyes heavier with age, or maybe just the weighty disappointment that his jewel had married a poor painter rather a man with a more pride-worthy occupation.

As he’d done before they met, he worked – or said he did. Some days she’d come home to canvases stacked against the walls, each one adding wet paint -- unwanted color -- to the forever grimy plaster, her husband stripped to the chest, gleaming with sweat, heaving with exhaustion as he attacked his work with brush or charcoal. Other times, though, he’d be sitting in front of the cheap little TV, remote in one hand, beer in the other.

Then there were the nights. Virginity having lost its value long before her adolescence in the 70s, she’d not come to their bed inexperienced. Igualada may not have been a big city, but the world still came to it through slick magazines, American movies, and television shows out of Madrid. Boys had always been available to practice with.

It was … no, she thought, believed, lied to herself, that it’d been good. But sitting in the lounge of the Pont Royal, she had a much better view of it all. His hands had been strong, yes, but also coarse. His body had been tight with muscle, yes, but also rough. His eyes had been hungry for her, yes, but no matter what she did, it was never enough.

A memory of a morning: sleeping in while the bells rang the rest of the city to church, another thing she’d discarded with her virginity. The night before, she’d been cooking, a skill she never believed she’d ever really perfect, when he’d come up, wrapped his arms around her, pulling her away from the rushing water, the rising mountain of foam in the sink. He’d worked that day, canvases drying on his easel, on the sofa, leaning on dining room chairs. When he worked, he had a broad grin on his face. When he smiled, his hands always came to her.

Cupping her breasts, fingers knowing intuitively where her nipples were hidden, he pulled her back still more, the insistence of his erection clear to her through his pants, the fabric of her skirt. “No,” was all she’d said, shaking her head. Women, her mother had said, should never argue.

“Dishes can wait -- everything in the whole wide world can wait. I have something to show you. Come on –“ A tug on her arm pulled her away from cleaning up. Drying her hands on her skirt, she allowed herself to be led from one room to another. The bedroom, she immediately noticed, was a mess: clothes on the floor, blanket wadded up, pillows slipping out of their covers. But he didn’t see any of it. Pulling her through the sleep-shuffled chaos, he put her in front of her mirror.

“Here,” he’d said, posing her like one of the little wooden models he studied. “Yeah, like that. Hand right here. Perfect. Okay? Now just relax.”

Shoes, first: slipping one off then the other. Then her stockings, his hands reaching up under her skirt, deftly sliding fingers between elastic and her waist, before steadily, teasingly down.

Buttons followed, only a few on the dress she’d worn that day. A few until they were all undone and he was slipping her shoulders free, dropping the weight of the dress to the floor in a hush of falling fabric. Reaching hehind her back, he found the hooks to her bra, pulled away the straps and the silken cups away with steady patience. Last were her panties, also removed with almost glacial drama, the spell only broken when she had to lift one foot to allow him to take them away.

Behind her, erection felt even though he was fully dressed and she wasn’t at all, he moved her again until she was perfectly in front of the mirror. “I want to show you something really beautiful,” he said.

Pretty – she’d been called that my her mother, her father, some aunts, some uncles. Attractive – she’d been called that by other girls, usually grudgingly. Good-looking – she’d been called that by a few boys, usually not wanting to flatter her out of reach.

Beautiful – of course she’d been called that, probably by more than a few relatives, maybe a girlfriend or two, or even by a few boys. But after that day, whenever she heard the word she would think about standing naked in front of a mirror. At first with a hidden, secret joy, but later – when she had been pulled out of the shade of her ignorance – with bitter tension.

But this was before, back in the days where she didn’t know anything except that she was standing naked in front of a mirror. Back when she and he were a poor, happy, couple in a dirty, cold, and noisy apartment.

Back when he’d stood behind her and said one word. “Look.”

And she had. What she saw had made her face sag into a weighty frown: a young woman dropping toward mid-twenties, early thirties, once high and firm breasts – petite but always well shaped -- now starting to suffer under gravity, tight belly now beginning to balloon outwards, and elegantly tapered legs approaching chubbiness. A woman once perhaps worth looking at, maybe even following, possibly even the recipient of a high then low whistle but now … now in the past tense, all of that tightness, that buoyancy, that life behind, not in front of her.

The dropping of her face must have been clear to her husband, as his own sagged as well. “Not what I mean,” he’d said, kissing her shoulder. “Not what I meant at all.” She tried to pull away from the contact of his lips, but his hand had become firm, keeping her facing the cold, hard, silver of the mirror. “Try to see the way I do, look at my eyes.”

And she had. What she did, at first, kept her face leaden with disappointment and her cheeks burning with hate. Why would he force her to face the harshness of her own image? But then she’d looked up and away from her reflection to see him peering over her shoulder. Peering over her shoulder with bright, heated eyes. Bright, heated eyes that bounced back into the mirror, echoing a reflection of herself in his vision. Imagination wasn’t a quality she’d ever really tried to develop in herself -- the world being previously all she’d ever wanted, never hungering for anything that wasn’t in front of her eyes. But that afternoon she really did try to imagine herself as the woman her husband touched whenever he could, kissed so often, watched getting dressed or undressed, and pressed a determined erection against while they slept in their too-small bed.

Beautiful … yes, she was. Spry and lean, body straight and tall, deep red nipples at the tips of gently rising breasts, shoulders shapely, skin with the glow of energy and passion, belly plush and warm, legs long and tight with girlish spring, thighs robust but not too muscular –and at the base of her tummy, between those vigorous thighs and legs, a thin feather of hair that led into her now moistening depths.

“You are too beautiful for words,” Escobar had said to her, his voice a bit of basso music in her ears. “Too beautiful,” that last falling away, she unsure if he’d added anything to the two words.

The burgundy tips at the ends of her breasts had wrinkled into firmness as she’d looked at herself, seeing herself the way he saw her. Her skin had begun to shine, the air in their bedroom starting to ring of salt from her sweat – and in the deeps of her, where there had just been moisture between her thighs, below her belly, there was now an urgent pulse and definitely, positive wetness. Listening to him, trying to pick out the exact words of his low tones, wasn’t important. Having him inside her was.

Turning, she’d embraced her husband, arms snaking around his waist, pulling him tight. Clothes. They were in the way, they had to come off. Buttons first, fingers popping them away one by one, doing to him with much more urgency and less divine ritual that he’d done to her.

Off, his shirt. Off, his undershirt. Hands on his belt, but then his words through her urgency. “I want to paint you, Constance. I want to really paint you. To get it right.”

It was not a new request -- after all, a flavor of it had been one of the first things he’d said to her -- but it wasn’t a common one. Instead, it was one that he asked only at certain moments. Like her birthday, claiming that no gift he could give her would measure up to finally being able to create a perfect portrait of her. Same for Christmas: with the same explanation. It would be a complete execution, not just a simple sketch. Color and not just pencil lines on paper.

Birthday, Christmas, she’d always shaken her head, another simple word -- because even about this women did not argue -- and then a refusal to discuss it further. She told herself that it was good to keep him waiting for some things, a sizzling spice to keep him interested – especially after that first initial taste of capturing her on that green grass hill those years ago -- but there was also pleasure in denying him.

Too hot, she almost agreed to his request, but then came to enough of her senses to shake her head. “Maybe,” came out as a throaty whisper.

It had been enough for him, and he’d dropped the rest of his clothes in a franticly clumsy strip. To the bed, messy or not: she throwing herself back, wantonly spread wide, brazenly exposed.

Again, restrained and patient despite his clearly determined erection, he carefully approached her, taking two minutes when she wanted two seconds, kneeling down on the ruffled covers to peer, intently and attentively, between her legs. For a man with hands that normally appeared rough and tough, he moved with a painters precision and admiration for detail: labia parted, he ran a slow, steady finger from opening to the tight bead of her clit, the direct contact at the end making her legs and thighs tighten and air get drawn into her lungs with a long, low whistle.

A kiss then, to her other lips, and to the hot button at their top. A kiss then, that turned into a lick, a butterfly flutter that made her whistle into a moan, approaching with each flick of his tongue, a rippling scream.

Then she wasn’t approaching; she’d come, arrived to her destination with a primal sound and involuntary trapping of his head between her thighs. The world went away, lost to a blushing flush and a body surge of pleasure.

And he was inside her, sliding himself deep into her with no resistance – either from her mind or her body. It was good. Lord, it was good. Filling her, he drove himself rhythmically and powerfully, making her breasts bounce and shake with each push, each thrust.

How long? Unsure. Time left her, retreating against the waves and surges and ripples and bursts that came with him inside her. Without her will, her arms again were snakes coiling around his back, and her legs lifted, giving him better entry and more traction from the soles of her feet leveraged against the sliding sheets.

Then it was his turn, and with his orgasm, a new form of it for herself. Again a reflection: the pleasure he took in her returned to her as an unexpected and blaze of delight.

They’d slept afterwards: he in her, she wrapped around him. Two people become one, joined by sweat and semen and slippery fluids.

Good times, yes, but only because she hadn’t opened her eyes, had slept through all of those years. Not that there hadn’t been signs, clues to what had been going on.

Like the next day, a Saturday, when he’d been out – dragging his canvases and sketches around town again, begging for patronage, trying to sell his work to galleries, setting up stands and easels to tempt the few off-season tourists who’d come to town – and she’d been cleaning. A smile on her face, yes, she remembered that: grinning like a young fool as she’d snapped sheets, bundled clothes into hampers, making their home a place worthy of living in.

Leaning against a wall in their tiny living room was a tilted stack of fresh paintings, just like many she’d seen – and moved – in the time they’d lived there. Didn’t know why, but this time she’d actually looked at them, flipping one after another, seeing images of the city, their neighborhood, bits of faces, pieces of their life, and then … and then … and then … a new one, a fresh one, a work just created.

On the bed, she lay, sublime and lovely, relaxed and illuminated from within. Around her covers twisted and bunched. It was obvious, unquestionably evident, that this young woman had just experienced a powerful bodily joy.

Obvious, too, unquestionably evident, as well, that this was herself: naked and spent. Here was a portrait taken -- not given. She’d never given him the permission he sought. She vaguely recalled whispering “maybe,” not “yes.” By painting her regardless, he’d shown how little her wishes mattered. She trembled, feeling violated and wronged. She’d pushed his insistence out of her mind, trying to focus instead on his passion, his possible talent, his kindness – and, of course, the way he saw her, the way he’d allowed her to see herself through his eyes.

Now, though, what it was: a betrayal of trust. Just one of many.

Another sip in the lounge of the Pont Royal hotel, but this time her tea wasn’t hot, wasn’t warm, wasn’t even tepid.

It was cold.

The View From Here: Breasts

(the following is part of an ongoing 'column' I did for Suspect Thoughts, and, no, it's not supposed to make sense: only be weird fun)

I bought a pair of breasts the other day. I’d been putting it off for months – general hemming, hawing, that kind of thing – but then I walked by a body shop, you know, that pseudoskin place down on Maholley Terrace, by the baby fat bakery, and there they were in the window: two of the most gorgeous set of tits you ever did see. Now I know what they say, that bigger isn’t always better, but I’ll tell ya, it’s only the folks who’ve got stuck with little bitty titties are the ones sprouting that kind of stuff. Size, I’ll tell you, is where it’s at.

So I go into the place right, just to get a feel for them – you know what I mean? – and like a pot-bellied nursing fly this sales drone latches right onto me …ssssuuuuccckkk! I had to whip out my pocket knife and ease the blade between his lips and my skull to break the suction. Soon as he’s free – leaving a mean-ass hickey, too – he starts right into it: a hardcore, non-stop, subliminally packed pitch: “Icansee(buy) thatyou’rethe(buy) kindaguy(buy) whoknowsquality(buy) merchandise.”

Lucky for me, my little neighborhood has recently become a spawning group for telemarketers, the ground thick with their gelatinous offal, egg-cases crackling underfoot, so I’d dowsed myself with cheap-ass perfume to ward off their greedy suckers. Once the smell of the stuff got to his ridiculously under-sized brain he’s quivering eyes lost their luster and his lips sagged down to his waist. “Yeah,” he gurgled through his flaccid sucking organ, “what you want?”

I nodded to the hooters in the window. “How much for the tits?”

He signed, his soft body rippling with the action. It was so disgusting I almost wished I hadn’t cheapened myself before becoming – excited he would have sucked by brain out of my skull trying to remove my wallet from my pants but at least he didn’t fart, burble and quiver like three-day-old birthday pudding. “That’s (sigh) the special. Three hundred goobahs.”

I slapped him hard across what passed for his face, sending his sagging organ whipping around his body at least twice – ending with a disgusting smack when his drooling mouth slapped against the side of his head. His cloudy eyes cleared just a bit so I snapped my hand down to his right hip and slugged his secondary sexual organ. Now completely clear, his eyes jerked and buzzed angrily with the stab of pain. You have to teach these parasites whose boss, you know?

“Don’t give me that feculum,” I growled, kicking him in his distended digestive tract. There was obviously a Paramecium World restaurant nearby, because he expelled a good three and a half bowls of wriggling cilia in red sauce: a venerable geyser of clear, watery flesh and crimson fluids that roared up, hit the ceiling, and rained back down -- pelting the entire establishment in greasy, half-digested Catch of the Day.

“How can I help you, Sir?” he managed to say between loud, sloppy licks of the walls, floor, management, other customers, and me.

“Like I said, I’m interested in the tits in the window,” I said, scraping saliva off my new shark-skin jumper.

“An excellent choice, sir,” he said, belching loudly, the action setting his entire body to quivering with a heavy wave-action. I was momentarily fascinated by him, hypnotized, by the rolls of loose flesh and the way they undulated up to the top of his head – momentarily covering his beady-eyed face with greasy skin. “The finest quality of breast there is.”

“How much?” I repeated, knowing that the ballistic discharge of a meal had most certainly purged his memory as well: our previous conversation just a residue on the harder-to-reach corners of the place.

“For you, fine sir, just two hundred and fifty goobahs,” he said, smiling. The effect was disturbing in the extreme.

I swallowed my revulsion and my own breakfast of immature college graduates and slapped him again. This time his face only wrapped partway around his tiny skull – and I filed away the fact that either these guys were getting tougher or I needed to work out a lot more.

“What was I saying? My goodness, I must have forgotten my brain today! I mean to say that those choice items are currently being offered for the special price of two hundred goobahs.”

Luckily I’d remember to shop armed, so I was able to drop the price down to a hundred and fifty by shooting him in the foot. He made the most delightful piercing scream – shattering every toe and fingernail in the place – as he jumped up and down, thin, yellow blood bubbling disgustedly from the wound.

“Sold,” I told him – pointing my weapon between his tearing eyes in case he had any thoughts about offering insurance or, heaven forbid, gift wrapping. Posthaste, my new boobs were out of the window and into a travel-bubble. The creature was even quite civil as he accepted my squirming pile of goobahs and fed it into the maw of the banking worm.

So that’s how I got my tits. Spectacular, aren’t they? I do have to say that I am quite, quite pleased with them – but, to be honest, while they’re loads of fun, I have to admit that the actually shopping was more fun that the tits ever have been. Funny how that is, ain’t it?